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At the heart of the Hattersley Estate on Wednesday afternoon, an artist was creating a mural of Ricky Hatton, screened by two Transit vans as he spray-painted the spiky hair of the boxer who travelled from this place to the top of the world.
Hatton would have approved – a wall facing the car park at the Harehill Tavern, a pub without ostentation on an estate he loved, has been selected – though there was little consolation to be found about something beautiful being fashioned from his death. His funeral is on Friday and there is still only bafflement about the loss of an individual who had seemed, for all the world, to be tackling life head on.
I reach the pub while tracing the route of Hatton’s funeral procession – the Harehill is one of seven points where the cortege will pause – and the grief is still as raw in all those locations, where people are being encouraged to gather on Friday.
At his detached home on Bowlacre Road which, because he loved Elvis, Hatton called ‘The Heartbreak,’ the bouquets of flowers laid along with football shirts, scarves and boxing gloves with messages for ‘the people’s champion’ are wilting now, 26 days on from his death.
The wide leafy street, lined with distinguished properties and fringed by farmland, reveals just how far Hatton had travelled in a material sense. The flagpole outside the house, from which a Manchester City flag hangs at half-mast, reveals his enduring love for that club. His grandfather played for City before the war, his father was in their reserves, and Hatton had been in their School of Excellence before life took him on a different course.
It will be from the Cheshire Cheese, the pub five minutes walk away, that the cortege will begin its journey. That establishment, with a sea of roses covering the porch, is where they remember Hatton for his humour and ‘awful dad jokes,’ according to landlord Tony Cooper.
The sporting world will pay its respects to the late, great Ricky Hatton on Friday when his funeral is held in Manchester
The freshly painted mural to Hatton opposite the Harehill Tavern, one of his favourite pubs
The Cheshire Cheese pub in Manchester where the cortege for Hatton's funeral will begin its journey on Friday
The route will wind up the Stockport Road, past the Village Chippy, the Grapes, Queen Adelaide and Buxton pubs, and having passed a high spot overlooking the Saddleworth Moor will reach the very different kind of home he knew before finding fame.
A left turn into Hattersley Road East will bring him out, as it always did, into the sprawling overspill council estate which Hatton grew up on and loved, even though life there was - and still is - a struggle.
Near the Harehill, people speak of having seen less of Hatton, yet of him having looked well when they did. ‘It was six months ago, and he seemed his usual self,’ says Julie Weekes.
‘I hadn’t seen him this summer, but he was the same approachable Rick when you ran into him around here,’ adds her sister, Sheila.
As far as is possible to piece together any real sense of a private life, Hatton’s last three or four weeks do seem to have been full and busy, with no hint of what was to come.
He spent several periods of the summer at his place in Tenerife, joined at various stages by his daughters Fearne and Millie, nephew Jack, niece Lola and granddaughter Lyla. Lyla, who turned seven in August, had clearly become the apple of his eye. He was her ‘grandad Richard’. He loved that she had taken up boxing and that he was her occasional babysitter.
Hatton, Jack and Lyla enjoyed a session in the mitts under a blue sky, one Tenerife morning in early August. ‘Another Hatton’s at it now. What we gonna do? Go on baby girl!’ he’d said of Lyla, just 11 days before he died.
The images Hatton posted from Tenerife suggested an individual among so many friends, in all his usual haunts there: the Attic Rooftop Bar, Casey’s Cocktail Lounge, the Red Lion, the Gaelic Corner.
At his detached home on Bowlacre Road which, because he loved Elvis, Hatton called ‘The Heartbreak,’ the bouquets of flowers are wilting now, 26 days on from his death
Hatton, pictured here with Liam and Noel Gallagher, was known as the people's champion
On an afternoon only three weeks before the end of his life, he was dancing under the parasols placed outside at one dining place. It’s hard to view the clip without smiling at his infectious spirit, as he added ‘dad dancing’ to those ‘dad jokes’.
The loss of a friend, David Leigh, who took his own life in early August, stunned Hatton. But his preparations for a comeback exhibition fight against Abu Dhabi’s Eisa Al Dah, planned for Dubai in December, were fitted into a very busy late August.
There was a trip to Dublin to see Oasis play Croke Park on August 17, preceded by watching an Oasis tribute band in the city the night before. A trip to the PFA’s gala awards event at the Manchester Opera House, two days later, to hand Manchester City’s James Trafford his award as Championship Players' Player of the Year for his promotion season with Burnley.
Then it was back to Tenerife before a return to Manchester to see his beloved City play and lose against Tottenham at the Etihad Stadium.
There is a distinct sense, known to all retired sports stars, that none of this could hold a candle to the days of boxing glory.
Almost every week, Hatton would post a ‘Throwback Thursday’ image of himself in his fresh-faced prime. An image of himself leaping over an upturned bin with excited local schoolchildren in pursuit, channelling his inner Rocky, is a reminder of how he took his city and its people along with him for the ride.
His preparations for the Al Dah fight included 10 lots of three-minute sessions on the bags, replicating the rounds he would face.
Hard work, certainly, for a 46-year-old, and the elbow pain he’d been experiencing was a reminder of his age, but it brought him into his gym and among his kind of people.
That gym, Hatton Health and Fitness on Hyde’s Market Street, is the place to which the funeral cortege will head after leaving the spot where his parents’ New Inn pub once stood on the Hattersley Estate.
‘He was a presence here whenever he stepped inside,’ says another local, Dave Churlton, outside the gym, where Manchester City and United scarves are tied together to the railings in his memory. Here is where Hatton provided wise counsel and mentorship to new generations of young boxers.
An unprepossessing pebbledash building a few blocks away, in Hyde’s labyrinth of back-to-backs, better encapsulates the world he knew when yet to discover fame. This is the Hyde and District Boxing Gym, a place he found after deciding to fight when being bullied at school.
But it is to the redbrick town hall that the procession will head after Hatton’s Gym and where hundreds are expected to gather. There, on Wednesday, the people of his town were remembering his great fights – and above all the legendary world title win against Kostya Tszyu, 20 years ago. ‘There’s not been a better underdog than our kid when he won that night and it was here, in Manchester,’ says another local, Daniel Ogden.
They describe seeing him around here from time to time - in the local Morrisons and driving down from the gym out towards the motorway in his car, which had Manchester City headrests. Hatton didn’t always drive around in Del Boy Trotter's three-wheeler from Only Fools and Horses, which he famously reckoned he’d traded in his Rolls Royce for.
Hatton with his granddaughter Lyla, who turned seven in August. He was her ‘grandad Richard’ and Hatton loved that she had taken up boxing
The unassuming Hyde and District Boxing Gym, where Hatton honed his skills after taking up the sport to help him fight bullies
Hatton’s infectious appeal attracted immense support wherever he fought and meant that, from Manchester to Madison Square Garden, he never seemed to be the ‘away’ fighter
Right into September, he seemed occupied. He promoted a brand of workmen’s gloves – because lucrative sponsorship deals didn’t follow the four-times world champion into retirement. He celebrated his granddaughter’s seventh birthday.
He headed over to Leeds to speak at an event in aid of the Hunslet Club, a youth organisation run by friends of his, and ran into Dave Paris, who refereed his Tszyu fight. ‘Brought a little tear to my eye,’ Hatton said, posting an image of the two of them.
But it is a podcast which he recorded at his gym on September 9 – just five days before he died – which leaves behind the most heartbreaking sense of how much Hatton had to live for and how well he seemed.
The extraordinary and utterly compelling recording, hosted by ex-Commonwealth fighter Darren Barker, for Barker’s ‘First Round TV’ channel, runs to more than an hour. Hatton is irrepressible – funny, engaged, committed, and with an extraordinary grip on the details of places, fights and fighters.
It is after describing the mental struggle he’d faced following bruising defeats to Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao that Hatton tells Barker this: ‘You keep it in and keep it in and keep it in and it festers away but thankfully I didn’t get to the stage where I ended up killing myself. I got to the stage where finally, for whatever reason, I decided to go and knock on someone’s door and say, “Please help me”.'
Barker asks Hatton: ‘How are you now, Rick?’
Hatton replies: ‘Never better, to be honest with you.’
We will probably never know how much of a burden he was carrying, behind that irrepressible exterior. The South Manchester coroner has not revealed the preliminary cause of Hatton’s death. Hatton’s son, Campbell, said this week that the family are setting up a charity in his father’s name to maintain his spirit and ensure that ‘no one fights alone’.
A tribute is paid to the late Hatton on the big screen at his spiritual home, the Etihad Stadium, where his funeral procession will finish
Hatton takes a punch from Floyd Mayweather. That brutal defeat in 2007 led to mental health struggles for 'The Hitman'
Hatton’s infectious appeal attracted immense support wherever he fought and meant that, from Manchester to Madison Square Garden, he never seemed to be the ‘away’ fighter. His hugely anticipated Manchester fights always drew the city to a halt, so it is appropriate he will be doing that all over again on Friday, when his cortege winds its way towards Manchester Cathedral.
What he cherished above all was being bracketed alongside Frank Bruno as a ‘people’s champion’ - known to one and all as ’our Ricky’ - and we will be reminded of that during the midday cathedral memorial service.
Jerusalem and Abide With Me are the hymns; John Rutter’s The Lord Bless You and Keep You the anthem. When those who mourn him have emerged, the cortege will finally head to the Etihad Stadium, Hatton’s spiritual home.
Crowds numbering 15,000 turned out in Louisville, Kentucky, on the day of Muhammad Ali’s funeral, nine years ago. It would have amused Our Ricky to know that he will be giving the great man a serious run for his money.
